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trying to increase SEO, new website..

i've been working at trying to increase my ranking on google.. i know its gonna take time. i do reach top of page on a google search for all my additional services with my city name.. 'mulch installation dallas, ga', 'fire ant control dallas, ga' etc.. but still 4th page on google for lawn care. i am on the first page near bottom for lawn care in my city on yahoo and bing and lycos though, but who uses that..

i want to blog but i use godaddy, and had a blog with wordpress... godaddy does not work well with wordpress so i had to take it down due to major load time issues. i guess i'm gonna look into something else. any suggestions?

I understand that having a facbook page, linked to you website help. It works on the number of likes your get. Be sure to put the like button on your site, and 'blog' on your facebook page. If people like your page they will connect to all your posts and advertise them to thier friends, this increases your googgle rating. Now I might be wrong on this but that is what Ihave been told.

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@Willshome ~ I would say you are heading in the right direction regarding WordPress, Flickr & Photobucket.

As far as listing your business and actual ON-PAGE SEO (on your website or blog), keyword research is needed.

Hosting for your photos: The above are great for SEO, but if you want to put those photos in your website, you will be dragging unnecessary code along with them.

The bigger the file size on your photos the slower your website will be. When placing photos on your site, you do not want to exceed 200kb...I actually suggest 100kb or less. Speed is now officially a part of Google's Algorithm

I use Picasa & Skydrive to store my photos just in case I need these later.

Picasa is great for file size reducing. Once your photos have been uploaded, you simply export them back to your computer and choose the size of your photo.

Skydrive is also great for photo storing. It is also amazing for other aspects that can help your business, such as uploading Microsoft Documents; Excel, Word,etc. So if you are on the road and have uploaded a work schedule and cannot remember that one customer, you can access your account via your smartphone.

WordPress WordPress.com is for blogging & WordPress.org is for self-hosting(use this for your business)BUT GOOGLE loves the .ORG version.
Google Business Listing Google Places is slowly being replaced by Google+ Local, so you need to get on that, like 5 minutes ago! ! !

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i've been working at trying to increase my ranking on google.. i know its gonna take time. i do reach top of page on a google search for all my additional services with my city name.. 'mulch installation dallas, ga', 'fire ant control dallas, ga' etc.. but still 4th page on google for lawn care. i am on the first page near bottom for lawn care in my city on yahoo and bing and lycos though, but who uses that..

i want to blog but i use godaddy, and had a blog with wordpress... godaddy does not work well with wordpress so i had to take it down due to major load time issues. i guess i'm gonna look into something else. any suggestions?

You can leave the domain registered with godaddy and then host it elsewhere.

Pat

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what about having to different web pages?? i thought of mabee having something like (insert city name)lawncare.com or something. (whatever i could get) then host my blog only there, with mabee a backlink to my main website?

i notice one of my competitors has 2 websites, and they are both at the first page on google.. one is the regular and one is called their corporate site. neither one is much different though besides you can pay your bill on one and not the other.

seems like another trick or scheme to move up, and i fear i could risk being sandboxed by google.. that would be my luck.

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what about having to different web pages?? i thought of mabee having something like (insert city name)lawncare.com or something. (whatever i could get) then host my blog only there, with mabee a backlink to my main website?

I made a site with my city name in it I don't think having the town name in the domain name helps Google rank (having more than 1,000 words about lawn care does)

I think you should focus on a nice clean website with a list of services and towns you service then back link it.
What customer is going to read a blog, most just want some pics and a phone #

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thanks for the info, nice looking site.. i am gonna give it a shot and put more info on the home page.

my website ranks on 3rd page for google search of lawn care in my city at this time, while my yelp listing is on first page.. atleast i have something on the first page, but i'd rather my website on the first page. the good thing about my yelp listing on the first page is my name is in the heading in bold, and its the only listing with stars next to it (from one 5 star review) so it stands out. i got a few calls for leaf clean-ups last week, from yelp. i rank high on yelp for some reason top 2, even for most cities out of my area. not a fan of yelp so far, i've read to many bad things and i hear once you get on there, they won't let you remove your listing.

who knows how long i'll have a listing on the first page, lots of compeition in my area. and these are companies who are more than likely paying a pro to do the SEO for them. I've definetly got much to learn about this..

Your design and layout of the site is great but you need a ton more content on the home page. Your home page should basically be a summary of all the content on your site.

You don't want to stuff it all into blocky paragraphs but you want as much as possible.